Moby Dick 1 / Oil on canvas & grommets. / 2012.

Moby Dick 2 / Acrylic on canvas & grommets. / 2012.

Stag (in progress)/ for MIC∆H.

Acrylic then oil on canvas. 2012.

“The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.” ~ E m p e d o c l e s

Lately I am in love with painting circles. Simplify, simplify, simplify. What started as a means of focusing, clearing, healing and fundraising for yoga school; now expanding into a fascination with sacred geometry. The shapes bring comfort while I listen to podcasts that spark my imagination of what’s possible.

They are for sale at my Etsy shop, gHetTomOrpHosiS and will be available starting 5/2012 at The Archive’s new location, 2903 S. Jefferson STL.  Custom colors and imagery available!

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The Journey Out: from Darkness to Light

How does it feel to find freedom?

What does the path through depression into full health look like?

This winter 2012 I was honored to create an image that speaks to that healing work, collaborating with students from three high schools: Lindberg, Maplewood Richmond Heights, and Kirkwood. CHAD’S Coalition—Communities Healing Adolescent Depression and Suicide—commissioned a mural to enliven their space that could represent this awakening to hope.  I drew the composition on three large canvases, and the students chose the colors that would create the impact of their message. From left to right, here’s the intention of each panel:

Trapped in a Maze (Lindberg High School) ::::::::::::Desperation. Darkness. Feeling stuck, confused, bored, vacant. Numb. Alone. We began by sharing words that describe depression– like being trapped in a maze without help, energy, or a sense of the way out.  Alongside the maze, the snake eating its tail, or ouroborus, is an ancient symbol representing the perpetual, cyclic renewal of life –or, “primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting before any beginning with such force or quality it cannot be extinguished. (Wiki)”  We explored how, even in a feeling of absolute emptiness, there can be a quality of surrender that connects us to all humanity throughout history, to the bigness of the cycle of life, death, rebirth that exists in all of Nature.  Then a “happy accident” (an unplanned visual event that steers the plight of creation, in art as in life) brought a new layer of hope – a student discovered a bee-line through the maze, an “escape hatch”.  She chose to highlight this route with bright yellow, mirroring the glint of wisdom in the snake’s eye, as a testimony to the hope that is ever-present, whether or not we can sense it yet.

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Finding My Path (Kirkwood High School) ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::You. Are. Here. An orange dot draws your eye to the start of a large labyrinth. Present moment awareness is the gist of the central panel.  Unlike a maze with dead ends and endless twists and turns, the apparent complexity of a labyrinth belies its utter simplicity:  you will reach the center if you take another step.  Like the path out of addiction or depression, mustering the momentum to persist in baby steps will inevitably lead you to your goal.  No traps, just willingness to keep on keeping, keep on opening.   The edge of this panel foreshadows the lightness that will come as we keep turning our attention from the overwhelming chaos and pain to the sweet breath we are taking, in this moment. Just this moment.

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Freedom in Expression (Maplewood Richmond Heights High School) :::::&, EUREKA!! With the foundation of committed self-care, with patience and persistence, comes the confidence to create again. To feel again. To sense pleasure and possibility, and to interact with others again. “This too shall pass” – and finally, it has.  With gratitude and exuberance, we can experience the Technicolor fireworks of our pure humanity again – but now with greater depth and compassion, honed and stronger for the darkness we’ve walked through.

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Our final creation speaks to the process of transformation, the relationship of dark to light. As one student artist, Ian, remarked: “Your depression doesn’t define you. It’s a representation of your complexity.”   As we nurture ourselves, we are more equipped to see and support others in their full complexity as well.

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The CHAD's Coalition lobby before the mural (comissioned to cover the old bank 'teller windows'.)

Cover of a zine full of quotes and wisdom nuggets i made to thank the students for being awesome. Inspired by the ALEXANDER lyric.

John Pachak, 2011, "These Hands"

Last fall I was delighted to line up another gig with the UMSL Public Policy Research Center’s Photography Project. In 2008, I’d worked on the Cherokee Street photography project with Mel Watkins, the project’s director, and Jean Durel, who commissioned the project on behalf of Incarnate Word’s “Heart and Soul” Community building efforts in Benton Park West.  I really enjoyed the teaching ethic of ‘support role’/ facilitator — giving youth the skills and tools to tell their own story, and staying out of the way as much as possible.  Our project bloomed into the “yOur voice yOur neighborhood” banners and the cherokeestreetnews.org neighborhood blog, as well a community digital photo archive.

Mel and I reconnected when she invited me to edit the Photography Project’s website (live soon!) — and as I did so, I marveled at the multifaceted, diverse ‘family photo album’ of STL’s many organizations and people groups that comprise the project. Since its inception in 2004, the project has documented over 30 groups.

Below is the brochure’s essay on City Greens Produce, the organization I worked with last fall. I was so impressed with their dedication, wisdom, and humility — they have their vision squarely set on the issues of health and food safety, and they are a beautiful testimony to the way that gardening and sharing food unite and empower a community. You are cordially invited to our opening!

OPENING RECEPTION: Tuesday, January 17th at 5:30 to 7pm

• Catholic Charities Midtown Center • Website: midtowncc.org

• 1202 S. Boyle Avenue, St. Louis, 63110 • Info: 314-534-1180

• Hours: 9 – 5 weekdays • Saturdays: Jan. 21, Feb. 18 and March 10, 1-4 pm

Kimberly Barber, 2011, "Big Girl Groceries"

Brochure essay }} Descend the stair to the cheery, yellow basement of Midtown Catholic Charities and behold: the smell of sautéed garlic and onions draws you in immediately. In the back, fresh vegetables are simmering, soon to be served up in hot wraps for lingering shoppers to sample. Powerhouse volunteer Bobbie Sykes has proven that one sure-fire way to seduce skeptics into eating a healthier diet is through happy taste buds. She muses, “I like to make community hunger disappear. There are no right or wrong foods but we should try to use them healthier.”

Welcome to City Greens Produce, an innovative nonprofit dynamically living up to its vision: “Our community should have access to healthy, fresh, and affordable choices to fuel our bodies and minds. People unite around food–sharing meals and memories. At City Greens our community is uniting to make sure each of us has the opportunity to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables – from the good earth to our family’s tables.” Here, neighbors living below the poverty guideline enjoy free memberships to shop for delicious, at-cost, tax-free, organic, local food. Sponsoring members make a yearly donation. Tables are stocked with produce from Lincoln County, Missouri and other local goodies such as Companion Bakery bread, Hilty’s Bee Yard jams and honey, Mound City Peanut Butter, and Freddy’s Ghetto Sauce.

Our photography project participants were a diverse crew ranging in age from 15-67 and including Midtown staff and volunteers, as well as the center’s director and a volunteer’s granddaughter. We started off taking notes on Edward Weston’s inquiry into the formal beauty of simple produce. Then we followed cues from Roy DeCarava’s poetic documentation of Harlem’s coming-of-age as we explored the community garden and took field trips following the path of the Supa Fresh Veggie Mobile – the lime green market-on-wheels that takes City Greens’ affordable produce to other St. Louis districts. Finally, in preparation for our own collaborative feast, we inquired after the deeper meaning of breaking bread together, inspired by Carrie May Weems’ “Kitchen Table Series.”

Nyree Thomas remembers, “Our kitchen table was like the living room of our house. And Mama had her seat – everybody knew. Under the plastic table cloth was a puzzle to put together…” It seems that the City Greens Produce market is growing up to be the ‘living room’ of the neighborhood, where gathering around real food and relaxing, hearty laughter is good medicine.

—Lyndsey Scott, PPRC Photography Project Instructor

WHAT IS THE PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT?
The Photography Project is modeled after the pioneering community photography programs of Wendy Ewald and is sponsored by the Public Policy Research Center at the University of Missouri St. Louis and directed by Mel Watkin. Each year PPRC’s Photography Project teaches volunteer community groups how to photograph their work to improve the quality of life in St. Louis. The resulting exhibition is displayed at two locations, the PPRC Photography Project Gallery on the UMSL campus, and in neighborhoods where the volunteers work. Through these partnerships, the Photography Project strives to bring art directly into St. Louis neighborhoods while also highlighting the undertakings of local organizations working towards the greater good and inspiring people to get involved with their communities.

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“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am.

I know that I am not a category.

I am not a thing — a noun.

I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe..”

- Buckminster Fuller

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In this evolving, the ever-changing light is a sly conspirer. Today Is. We are.  Passing – - - feel it?! Then the light shifts and the moment is gone, or bursts open precious again.  Watching a cloud’s shadow from the window of an airplane; or the bricks turn gold at sundown.

US LIGHT. A few years ago, a group of friends made a yearly tradition of collaborating on a holiday pageant called “May These Changes Make Us Light.”  US LIGHT became my nickname for it, abbreviating to reference the kind of power we have together when we are supporting the unfolding of each other’s highest potential.     This brave togetherness requires a both an ability to inhabit the Now moment with open-ended curiosity, and a willingness to bear with inevitable dark glimpses of each other’s shadows–without jumping ship.

This year I’ve learned to love the shadow too, in myself and others — not to skip over the unpleasant parts or stiffen around the pain – but to listen, to soften, to allow. To experience darkness as intimate with light.

These pictures speak to that.  Unearthed while cleaning out my photos during web revamp last fall,  they are favorites from the past few years stash, and they make a melody together.  Blindfolded, gleaming, refracted, purring, jagged; hollow fog, intrinsic glow.

Click (below to enlarge) the visual litany and bless the dark in the light.

Tango, entangled, perfect.

Happy Solstice – - – Happy turning – - – Happy traveling toward the light

Here is our short animation, created with iStopmotion and GarageBand:

This won't hurt a bit! / silliness. laughter best med...........>>>

I flew down the barn loft ladder and ran barefoot to the dock, stripped down and plunged. Surrounded. Safe. Submerged in the dark cool of the farm’s pond, held in the secret soundproof water, I thrashed and screamed for the better part of an hour.  Roaring churning mouthfuls of rage, stroke up for a gasp, sink down and thrash.  Up gasp, down thrash. Washing-machine; womb. Water has always been my secret keeper, since swim team practice days of youth when I’d hide the day’s tears or the song in my head deep in the underwater world. Now: Breaking invisible chains, sending strings of psychic expletives to the legacy of oppressors I’d obeyed with expert compliance my whole life – some I’d met, some I’d never.  Magazines full of body image standards, my past pastor’s monopoly on a masculine & punitive God, dumb boys who ignored my No, an intuition-stifling education system, a corporatocracy that undervalues creativity… ..and how I’d sometimes believed in and settled for my own meek powerlessness. ?!?!?!?!?!  A n g e r. I’d heard about this. Up til now, it had been a vague rumor.

What had pressed “Eject?” It was Clown Camp at the Possibility Alliance – alas, no simple laughing matter!  “Superhero Clowning for Social Justice,” August 2010, was hysterical, full of giggles and romps and games but so precise at breaking open layers of pretense, stuffed pain, anything that blocked total authenticity. The barn loft was the classroom that held the “rasaboxes”, an invitation to step into and ‘try on’ the breath and postures of various emotions.  Little did I know what was in store for me when I stepped into Rage.  The feminine fury that lives in my belly and won’t settle for the suffering inherent to our present world’s imbalance woke up.  Here’s the story of how my body eventually followed suit to molt the filters that no longer serve my soul in shining its light.

Nine months ago today I woke up with skin like oozy bubble-wrap. Good morning face! WTF?! Wet, tender sores covered my face, ears, and neck. Burning boils on my shins. Overnight, my body had transformed into an unrecognizable, foreign landscape. Pause? Guess I have to postpone that interview til next week…..

I made an appointment with a medical intuitive and one with a homeopathic doc. I drank a lot of water. I slept. The health reading pointed to the need for inner cleansing –a liver flush and probiotics, as well as some personal support toward how this outbreak fits into my life’s sacred contract.  The doc gave me a few new words: “acute dermatitis with methicillin-resistant-staphleococcus-aureus (MRSA) cellulitis” and supported my natural approach. She did extensive allergy tests, suggested some homeopathic remedies, and wished me the best. For these ailments, western med has corticosteroids and antibiotics to offer; the former offers temporary suppression of rash symptoms with no support for the root cause, and the latter produces more evasive and stronger strains of this resistant staph bacteria.

So it was me and herbs and my blue sleeping bag for the long haul.  Which I thought miiiiiight mean, like, two or three weeks? Tops.

I stepped up as cheerfully as possible to this latest gift-disguised-as-challenge from the universe, and dug into my research.  Eczema, or ‘atopic dermatits’ is common ailment and reputedly incurable, the typical approach is to do the best you can making symptoms less obnoxious ~ oatmeal baths, thick creams, anti-itch medicine.  I’d had patches of psoriasis since my teen years, slathered on the prescribed topical steroid and forgotten about it.  But this was new, an aggressive occupation of my entire epidermis. The more I read, the more I learned that eczema is increasingly traced to food or environmental allergies and leaky gut syndrome. The skin as our largest organ of elimination is a last-resort escape hatch for toxins when the liver is out of whack or the belly lining is weak. So I turned my attention inward, quit coffee (eeek!) and proceeded to undertake a massive, month-long fast and cleansing of my colon, liver, and kidneys.

Meanwhile I felt like shit. The eczematic raw skin is susceptible to infection, and in my case, MRSA found an opportune host. This flesh-eating bacteria often leads to lancing and Vancomycin via hospitalization, but is increasingly unphased by their arsenal of heavy-hitting antibiotics, so I decided to treat the boils with a minced garlic compress which burned like the dickens. The rash continued spreading downward; my skin was in turns hot, oozy, flaky, and super itchy. Sleep was erratic; the infection made me super-tired; clothes were terribly uncomfortable; and I was freezing all the time. I felt brazenly sensitive – the slightest deviation in temperature, thought, or environment would send me reeling, itching like a nervous tic.  Molting was not a metaphor, it was a reality.  I felt floaty, fuzzy, ejected from my ‘normal’ life – I cared about very little.  Sort of in shock, I entirely withdrew from people, work, and projects.  Going out was not in my frame of possibility – I wanted to hide from the wind, the sun, from humans, from the intensity and hideousness of my feelings. Bathtime was my sole consolation. Stillness. Can I be equanimous with this?

Frida Kahlo's _What the Water Gave Me_ ~ what my life felt like for the month of escape to the bath tub. Top: Cellulitis finally ready to ooze; Healing scabs; Turmeric compresses

Swapping roles - Adam and the apple, inviting me to some true inner healing of the knowledge of good and evil

About then is when the phrase “healing crisis” came into my frame.  Culturally we are so trained to equate getting better with feeling better, yet at times true healing has to include feeling and receiving the body’s messages which have been ignored, however uncomfortable that truth is. The homeopathic doctor Constantine Hering’s Law of Cure describes the direction of symptoms in a healing crisis:

From above downwards.
From within outwards.
From a more important organ to a less important one.
In the reverse order of their coming.

If you’ve had symptoms that have been repressed for years, full healing will retrace those steps.  The experience of toxins being released and flushed out can be hugely difficult to bear through, but also perfectly on the path to healing.  My partner JR repeatedly praised the perfect knowledge of all my cells doing their perfect work, and called me to bravery: “The only way out is through…”

So I let go. I gave myself over to the whole process, without dictating how long it needed to take or what it needed to look like. Why waste time in the cocoon wishing I were flying? It will come. I committed to full healing, mind + body + spirit.  JR’s encouragement and holistic health wisdom were stalwart company.  Something softened: I learned to let myself be unconditionally loved. Dressed in huge hoodies and cotton shirts I’d ooze right through, gaunt from weeks of juice fasting, moody and emotional and totally gross, still – he held me in the highest regard and nursed my needs, beyond all my resistance.  He brought me tea, challenged me to move my body and get fresh air when I was able, accompanied me to the dark corners, set an amazing example of self-nurture, and held me while I cried.   With this permission, powerful shifts started happening.  Old hurts loosened and healing messages came through my dreams.

‘Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food’ became came the dictum of our household. Garlic and turmeric compresses had successfully healed the infected cellulitis, and now we focused on flushing out the gut: green juice, green smoothies, green salads.  I had a heroine’s story of hope to follow: Donia’s if-i-can-do-it-you-can-do-it protocol offering at  http://eczema-natural-healing.com/ became my bible.

As I opened, teachers and support came out of the woodwork…. Funny how that follows, once I was a willing and worthy recipient, I received a barrage of terrific resources on exactly how to engage the mind+body game of healing. Superstar love-beam Kris Carr learned she had liver cancer and launched into an intimate, autobiographic documentary called Crazy Sexy Cancer about her learning curve living with the diagnosis and connecting to other survivors. Her proactive strategies and bright bravery inspired me to fully engage the opportunities inherent in my own, present life-makeover – I highly recommend downloading the crazy sexy manifesto and jumpstarting your own personal revolution!  She writes, “”This self-care thing is bigger than many of us imagine. The pursuit of personal health, spiritual wealth and happiness is actually a political statement, a peaceful protest and a powerful act of love. Why? Because in order to care for ourselves in a full-tilt-boogie-I’m-gonna-walk-the-talk sorta way, we must rebel against the broken systems that support dis-ease and dismantle the status quo. We can’t wait for special interests, government policies, subsidies, agribusiness, factory farming, pharmaceutical industries and advertisers to change. But we can get off our sofas, vote with our forks and knives and heal the way we eat, drink, and think.” Speak it, sister.

The godmother of affirmations, Louise Hayes,’ You Can Heal Your Life became my coffee-table go-to for pick-me-up quickies.  Suggesting the link between our thoughts and physical manifestations, she invites us to reconsider our patterned thinking and offer new mantras to the internal critic. “I suck” becomes “I accept myself just as I am now.”  “That’ll never happen” becomes “I am capable of making positive change.”  Specific to skin and scratching, she offers: “I feel safe to be me;”  “I release distractions from my deepest inclination;” and “I am at peace just where I am. I accept my good, knowing all my needs and desires will be fulfilled.”  When we’d make fun of SNL’s Jack Handey as kids, I never realized – ummmm — that would be me. ;0)

So I became more curious.  If I entertain for a moment the metaphysical underpinnings of this overwhelming physical manifestation, what does it tell me about how I’ve been being in the world? I found a resonant answer in Radical Healing, Rudolph Ballentine’s amazing compendium of integral health – east meets west meets internal meets external. He writes:

The diseases of homeopathy’s first miasm, psora, are functional, that is, they don’t generate structural change. Most typical are rashes on the skin that are red and itch. The fundamental mindset, the mental/spiritual posture that this miasm expresses, is one of being distracted from your deep and most authentic inclinations by the appeal of what you see others doing — in other words, of itching to do what isn’t really you. For a whole host of reasons — including a fear of assuming the power that is yours — you resist your special destiny. You come to see your own path as less compelling, despite deeper impulses that would push you toward it. The grass may seem vastly greener where others stand, and what they are doing may appear more exciting. Such attitudes create a strong desire to operate from outer rather than inner directedness. While in this psoiric state, you resist that inclination, but you are burning to give into it, and your energies are so caught up in the struggle with yourself over whether to do so or not that they are not available for such functions as digestion or assimilation, and you are therefore increasingly subject to deficiencies.

I reflected on the truth of that in my life, the way I have had a habit of resisting my own gifts, preferring to see everyone else’s life as beautiful and their talents pristine while putting myself down as Not Enough, only registering my failure.  I’ve been increasing awareness of this – but still fall prey to the pattern. The searing urge to scratch I came to feel as a reflection of my history of self-hate – literally despising the skin I’m in, physically tearing it off.   I found this in my journal from the early days of the outbreak:

Journaling was a great barometer. My body raised the uncomfortable mental reality to a level that could no longer be denied or put up with. Things had to change.  And they were.

******************************JR painting a wall in our bedroom: Now's Wow, Babe. Now is Wow." ****************************** (said to the cadence of "Zed's dead, baby. Zed is dead.")

It had been about six weeks into the adventure. I finally felt aware of the variables, equipped to do the work, committed, moving into a deep patience, a profound sense of compassion for myself, a soul- invigorating inquiry of how to live fully into a new way of being. JR was getting ready to leave for a season-long natural-building internship at the Possibility Alliance, and now I’d be largely on my own — building on the foundation we began together.

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I dropped him off at the farm, and spent a week at home with my parents receiving the particularly potent mama-TLC.  My fashion was pretty happening at this point — feet too swollen and syrupy for shoes, so I’d slug them into thick socks and giant old man slippers.  My hands the same, raw and arthritically engorged – slipped into modified socks as wrist guards to protect the delicate flesh.  Mama bought me color coordinated cotton warm up sets, coo’ed  at improvements, and fed me my favorite Moosewood carrot soup. I sat with Papa while he watched golf, and I felt totally loved. Whatever resentment had clouded my perception during my twenties dissolved into total appreciation and conviction that We Are All Doing The Very Best We Know How So Far.  Feeling more hopeful than ever at my impending healing, I returned to STL.

The house felt so empty without JR, and taking care of myself took all the energy I had. I’d stare down the dishes, which were so painful to my swollen sensitive hands. I discovered gloves. For the laundry, I’d take the stairs slowly, one at a time. It felt ridiculous that all my energy was taxed at a to-do list that include only my basic needs, but I gave in to that focus and the mechanism of gratitude that carried me through. There’s always a lens through which I’m lucky, lucky, and free……

As I built up strength, I started to plan the next task: say goodbye to my studio and shrink its contents to fit into a room in my apartment.  The allergy tests had revealed an off-the-charts allergy to dust. OOoof: My bright, 1000-ft nook of the 200-year-old Lemp warehouse cornered the market on dust….. thick, ancient, omnipresent, caking everything.  It was time to lighten up and breathe easier. As soon as I had enough stamina to walk the four flights up, I started to take a few hours an afternoon to sort out what I needed and what I could give away. As always, the process of “Atnas-ing” my own life rewards me with incredible lightness of being — letting go of built-up ‘what-ifs’ and all their material tethers stung at first, but then built momentum to be a totally joyful process. Friends aided the schlep with laughter, love, and pickup trucks. My final studio sale afforded me the gift of connecting with lots of beloved folk I hadn’t seen for months, as well as making much needed income after months out of work, selling and bartering art.

Back in my apartment, sorting out my new studio and starting to regroup, I had to contend with a sudden, mighty feeling of smallness. I felt tiny, stripped of dreams and plans and projections. No longer so drawn to Cherokee Street or community organizing at CAMP, indifferent to making paintings, unsure of how to contribute. Laughable, how little the world needs me! Out of work, absent from the art scene, retreated from circles of friends…. What matters? Where can I fit in meaningfully? What do I want to offer? Ken Wilber, in Grit and Grace, writes about his wife Treya’s dance with recurring breast cancer, fusing his integral inquiry alongside her journal excerpts. In one entry, she writes:

“I’m also feeling humility lately. I’m seeing more clearly how the things I’m dealing with in my life, the problems that come up in my friendships and in my marriage, my interpersonal problems, my doubts and fears, problems with money, questions over how to contribute to the world, uncertainty over what my calling is, wanting to find meaning in all the pain we go through. . . . how all of that stuff is almost exactly like the things everyone else is working with. I think there’s always been a part of me that felt like the little girl in the white house on the hill, that somehow the rules weren’t meant for me, that I was different. What I’m discovering through all of this is how I’m not different, how my issues are archetypal issues that other humans have been working with for centuries. And the feeling that comes from that is a new kind of humility, a new level of acceptance of things as they are, a new sense of okayness about things being as they are. And – which is nice – a greater sense of connectedness with others, like we’re all parts of one being working on these issues and growing through that process. Like I’m not different also means I’m not separate.”

I found the humor and took solace in this Every(wo)man revelation that I’m a tiny dot, just suffering and celebrating alongside 7 billion other tiny dots. Huge souls.

Nothing. Everything.

From this consideration grew a huge peace, and a desire to reach out to friends again, to sense that interconnection in action. I had been so consumed by my pain I had felt I had nothing to share, reluctance to be witnessed in such weakness. Ready to receive, I sought out my healers…..reiki at the gentle hands of Naado-Doa; craniosacral therapy during community hours at Cheryl’s Herbs with Robin, Mike and Josh; and twice weekly acupuncture with Brian and John at Community Acupuncture. Brian Harasha and I had swapped art for healing support so weekly trips to his healing lair at “Humblebee Village” took me on adventures from wheatgrass juice to the infrared sauna to the RIFE machine, and we’d share our woes and joys of being spirit embodied.  Kristina, super gentle & gifted colon hydrotherapist at Holistic Fitness, massaged my belly while all my $hit shook loose. Kelsey constantly had my back with frequent phone support, coaching me through powerful EFT sessions when i felt stuck in choosing pain. One day Micah and Caleb and I rendezvoused at the Tower Grove pool pavilion, and they simply, wordlessly, but so powerfully cradled my feet and head with love, love, love while I laid by the fountain. Mama’s Little Healers, indeed. Sometimes reaching out was hard…. One particular night, unable to sleep, overcome by pain, I called my dad in the wee hours of the morning – a first in our relationship. It surprised both of us I think, but it was amazing to let him love and share strength with me at such a vulnerable point, small talk not possible – just pure and present care in action.

Must….keep….on. Perseverance was the name of the game at this point. Skip the need for immediate feedback or ‘improvement’ and keep eating clean, exercising, thinking bright possible thoughts, and being patient and compassionate with frequent glimpses of my shadow.  It will come. But I’d wake to sheets full of shed skin and overwhelmed at the upkeep time and cost of organic eating, juicing, and washing every surface my body touched in effort to de-colonize my body and environment from staph.  Desperation set in when the water-damaged plaster roof of my office caved in at the same time our basement flooded with sewage. Really?!  My  landlord-friend and I had to laugh.  He was also attending to aligning, healing, cleaning house/brain, facing and releasing negative habits.  The harmony between our internal-external universes was comical. From an equanimous state, I could appreciate the design of each instance drawing me into surrender,  honoring destruction as a necessary part of the cycle of life.

I hit an all time low when a check-in with my doctor, who by now felt more like an encouraging coach who commended my research and effort, confirmed a bacterial culture still MRSA-positive. I conceded to an antibiotic, which I turned up allergic to. I saw an infectious disease specialist, who was more worried at the open skin from eczema than staph and so prescribed one of the heaviest-hitting topical steroid creams, Halebetasol. Then – - instantly –  I had skin!  I was overjoyed, even though the skin seemed to have grown over the infection. It was just amazing not to be oozing.  For about a week. Then – as quickly as it came – the “healed” skin left.  The eczema had been suppressed and so returned with a vengeance, and the infection was still raging, now worse than before.

Thud, rock bottom. Give in. Nowhere to run.  Neck raw, both wrists raw – as if shackles of pain. Why neck and wrists? Voice and choice. When I was taking care of myself, I’d get the sensation that I was trying to escape but stuck. Images of shackles and pillories loomed in my mind’s eye. Whether or not my soul was having a past-life memory, my heart felt connected in time-space to witchy women who were punished for their sacred wisdom. I grieved their punishment. I grieved the oppression and imbalance that suppressed feminine knowing and still does. I felt into my heart to open as much as I can to make it right, in my life, in my world. In this lull, a comforting exercise was to paint my lady heroes, women who have spoken their truth and shined.  My mama, humble giver lady hero, showed up to cheer me up, power-disinfect my house with squirt bottles of hydrogen peroxide and vinegar, and stoke the fires of my perseverance with her imperturbable, ironclad encouragement.

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I kept feeling into my creative soul – how can speaking my truth heal me? I’d jump on the mini-trampoline I borrowed from JR’s mama (rebounding moves lymph) with my sage stick for a microphone, singing crazy soul songs. I wrote.  I painted. I stitched together personal books of pages of my past.  I peered into my soul’s desires, determined to undo three decades of over-obedience and feel again what turns me on. I’m still feeling…

Perhaps the biggest undeniable gift of this illness has been an invitation to open again to the power of plants. From the moment I had energy to walk again, the trees in Tower Grove beckoned.  Arms wide, from bare to blossoms to budding, mature green to falling crimson, this year’s flip book of changing seasons has been a visual mantra, lining my heart with courage: Everything changes. This too shall pass. Present to the beauty of color, leaned up again the giant ginkgo’s belly, drinking deep the cleanest air in the city, grateful.  Slip off shoes, soil!– every cell open to imbibe aliveness. I grieved growing up not really knowing this communion: as a girl, my sacred spot was the sewage ditch — best scenery in town.  At home in the window sill, my aloe vera shushed my weeping sores with gentle, restorative moisture. In the backyard, tearing off kale and collards, luring slugs from the bok choy. Plenty.  Discovering flower essences, sea buckthorn juice, super-food supplements. Ah – mornings sipping on a steaming cup of Edgar Cayce’s recommended eczema cure —Slippery Elm inner bark gruel, a demulcifent that supports health stomach lining.  Most importantly, garlic. Allium sativum. Savior. <Insert triumphant choir harmonic third, Here.>

August was the about-face. Since then I’ve been supported by a daily dose of Allimed liquid, a stabilized form of garlic’s power-enzyme, allicin, which has steadily been healing my MRSA….for which I’m eternally grateful.  Turns out the eczema had been lingering because of the latent infection.  I got a chance to share my truth in an art show at RAC. I got a chance to swim in the wide waters, on family vacation to a cabin on Lake Michigan. Playing with my sisters, walking on the sand, with my skin feeling safe enough to expose to the sun and wind, I felt eternally, perfectly blissful. So whole. So much pleasure, just being in skin.  Since then, it’s been baby steps to total wellness.

For the first time in nine months, my skin feels just about great. I have no boils, no rashes, and a smidge of folliculitis on its way out the door. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night feeling itchy – like my skin isn’t quite used to this clear newness.  I’m excited to maintain and improve on my ever-deepening, gorgeous health – looking into cutting back sugar even further to curb candiadis, and aiming for a balanced pH body chemistry as well.  Yogaglo supports my daily practice at a budget-friendly cost in between Groupons to local studios, and I’m thrilled to be developing curricula merging yoga and animation for a K-3rd afterschool program.

My heart has soared with access to new tools of–Re-evaluation Counseling, also called co-counseling, and Restorative Circles.  And JR is home from the farm!  Beloved companion. We go to co-counseling class with about fifteen people every Wednesday, to study the theoretic premise, swap time, and do demonstrations. At the heart of “co-co” is the belief that through compassionate listening, we can support one another in fully discharging emotions that have built into patterns that block our freedom, and so regain our pristine intelligence and capacity for zest! We accessed Restorative Circles in a workshop at the IMC in Urbana-Champaign facilitated by Dominic Barter, receiving an intro to the history and premise with ample opportunity to practice facilitating semi-simulated circles. From their website: “A Restorative Circle is a community process for supporting those in conflict. It brings together the three parties to a conflict – those who have acted, those directly impacted and the wider community – within an intentional systemic context, to dialogue as equals. Participants invite each other and attend voluntarily. The dialogue process used is shared openly with all participants, and guided by a community member. The process ends when actions have been found that bring mutual benefit.” Learning about this tool gives me hope to move through ‘impasses’ I’ve felt come up in intimate friendships and collaborative circles, when personalities and pain seem to prevent future relationship.  OH! These aren’t walls, just giant steps.

With these tools, and with months of persistence and perspective from the humble healing cocoon, I feel more poised to be truly present to how I can enjoyably and effectively support our planet’s shifting – simple, surrendered, non-judgmental, patient, powerful. I reflect on my past outreach efforts on Cherokee, past hopes in STL, and I notice a need to fix people, to fix situations, or to offer solutions where perhaps they aren’t desired.  I forgive that tendency and move forward. My new commitment to myself is to befriend and collaborate with others who are treating themselves with nuanced nurture and who are committed to transforming personal shadow with awareness. I am drawn to substance-free, simplicity, sustainability. I understand in the laboratory of my own body, the endurance required to evolve and manifest new direction, and the importance of sacred companionship in that effort. In Radical Healing, Ballentine writes “In the same way that the accumulation of physical dross in the body forces us to deal with what’s underneath, what has led to it, so the accumulation of pollution on the planet must bring us to terms with the values and beliefs that underlie our way of life. To change the planetary mentality that has produced our ecological disaster will require seeing within ourselves the microcosmic version of the macrocosmic or planetary consciousness that is causal. . . . . Radical healing will require digging into the innermost parts of yourself to uproot the deepest causes.” When we’ve each begun in earnest this personal, sacred excavation, then our powers combined have the superpower to exponentially shift tired, imbalanced systems.  Outer ease birthed from inner integrity, or: by fully Occupying my inner power and unconditional worth . . . what then naturally changes?

And, how do we create social spaces that support this level of personal inquiry? Out with Celia to see TuneYaRds the other night, I basked in the banshee wizardry of mighty lady looped poetry.  After the show, though, I made a hasty exit – through the stiff cloud of second-hand smoke, a little wary of having been jostled by drunken dudes all night.  She noticed my out-of-place sensitivity ~ “It’s ok. You’re a baby now. You’ve got this tender, new skin. You don’t know what you’ll be yet, again.”  Having mercifully re-established my body as my temple, I’m hesitant to partake in any way of being together that doesn’t support our mutual well-being and catalyze some juicy co-evolution. Anything short of that feels deceptive and short-sighted, when I can sense what we’re fully capable of becoming. And yet I’m so hungry for collaboration, commingling: what does a radiantly healthy art/music scene look like?

What does a radiantly healthy planet look like? I feel so attentive to and thrilled by this present collective turning, like the first time watching a live birth – breath deepening, labor pains, so acute and urgent and compelling. How can I be of service to support this natural process and soothe pain?  The other day a friend stopped by in her ninja-mobile, a svelte black rental car for a traumatic post-crash interim: Despite the stress, “I’m excited to find the blessing in this….”   Last night I received an email from an art heroine of mine who is facing breast cancer: “There is proof that there really are Angels and Bodhisattvas in this/my life and that The Divine Universe is at play, looking out for my highest good, even via those who may have come disguised as ‘enemies’. What blessings abound!”  We are so fragile, so strong.   I feel humbled and grateful to be surrounded by humans who are taking the mystery fully for what its worth, living all the way into the questions, not flinching when the asking proves uncomfortable.

Again from Radical Healing,  “The reconnection that is the essence of healing is a process that reaches deeper and deeper, reshaping your consciousness and redirecting your energy so that your body is brought into greater and greater synchrony with the pulsing of the larger wholes of which you are a part. . . . . . Despite our unfortunate habit of considering our illnesses and disorders obstacles to living, that is not what they are. They are instead, as we have seen, opportunities. The secret fulfillment in your life is dealing with the problems that seem to plague you and prevent your from moving forward. What is ‘in your way’ IS your way.  The key to your personal transformation is the thorn in your side.”

What roadblocks are you turning into way-markers on your path?   I would love to hear, how.  Your courage sparks mine.   Let’s keep bearing with each other, bravely, attentively. Something so lovely is transpiring …